


Glass and Pearls

by boychik



Category: Dangan Ronpa
Genre: Gen, Self-Hatred, Super High-School Level Literary Girl
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-17
Updated: 2013-06-17
Packaged: 2017-12-15 07:31:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 933
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/846933
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/boychik/pseuds/boychik
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fukawa hates parties.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Glass and Pearls

One night, Fukawa Touko tells her mother her dream.

Tell me, what kinda books you wanna write, honey? Fukawa’s mother says, stroking her brow.

Grownup books, Touko answers without missing a beat. Her eyes gleam up at her mother’s in the semi-darkness, though they only register a fleshy haze—without her trusty coke-bottle lenses, she can’t see a foot past her face.

No pictures? her mother asks, her hands fluttering over Touko’s hair, fingers crawling and nestling in the soft crevices of Fukawa’s braids.

It can have a cover, of course, Fukawa says reassuringly. But inside it’s gonna be words. All grown up.

Her mom gives a small laugh, the sound spinning out of the corners of her painted mouth and bounding away.

Don’t laugh at my dreams, mom! Fukawa sputters.

I’m not! her mother protests. I know you can do it, honey. She plants a kiss on Fukawa’s forehead and eases the door closed. Fukawa watches the crack of light shrink and disappear. She’d sleep in the darkness but for half a dozen new ideas tearing through her eight-year-old mind. She switches on the flashlight she hides under the pillow, makes a round, airy tent of her sheets, and starts writing in a hardback journal in her self-made cave.

\---

Two books later, Fukawa is the new darling of the literary world. Her mother is dead. Fukawa attends the parties of the literati in a black sheath dress and her mother’s pearls. She wears them improperly, unluckily: before the party, she twisted the long strand twice around her neck. It’s only when her agent corrects her in an underbreath hiss does she run to the bathroom and with fingers trembling like an arthritic attempt to correct her error. 

She hates it, hates looking in the mirror where no matter what angle she twists and turns, her body is so fucking flat and straight. Hates her thin chest bulging like some starving third-world monstrosity, hates how it makes her look prepubescent like some stupid child who belongs on the playground poking worms with a stick, and nothing like a published author with vision and a contract. Speaking of vision, ha. Her eyes are these shallow colorless beads behind the glare on her giant glasses—but even those can’t save her from looking completely unintelligent. Her neck and shoulders are the color of dough but she’s red in the face like a drunken old man. 

She hates being wrong, hates being here, hates trying so hard to present and conduct herself so she’ll blend with the crowd when there’s obviously no fucking way she wouldn’t stick out as too young, too clueless, too bumbling, too unsophisticated, too worthless. They can all see past her shield of jewelry and cloth to the piles of shit inside. 

Swarming around outside is the shining pantheon of writers and their agents who gleam like glass, tossing back champagne like there’s no water on earth, publishers and editors horribly glamorous in the flowers of their youth, sucking down the martinis she’s five years too young to drink. Grownups writing grownup books drinking at their grownup parties. The word to use here is adult, her editor said, tapping at a line in her manuscript with a red pen. Grownup sounds so childish.

From outside come the strains of them laughing and laughing and laughing, this false tinkling sound like a wind chime before it smashes three stories to earth and her other mother (she’s still alive, but just barely) screams. These awful people with their horrid, empty lives would wander up to her and her agent—she felt so bad for him, he must feel like an idiot looking after her, big-headed, bug-hearted fifteen-year-old girl wonder—and praise her with wide false smiles pasted on their faces. I’ve read all your work, I love it. I love it! I love it! It’s incredible, for one so young. You’re so bright. You’re amazing, Fukawa. You’re gonna go far, kid! It’s a parade of glassy smiles, teeth bared like an animal’s. Claps on the back that are going to leave bruises come morning. Her agent smiles back, raises his glass to theirs in a toast. Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Light filters through the dregs of their glasses and bounces off the crystal facets endlessly; watching it is like staring down the dark hall of two mirrors put face to face. She wants to scream at him, They don’t mean a word! Can’t you see they’re making fun of me? 

She doesn’t want to go back to the party, where despite her pinching three-inch heels, she’s heads shorter than these masked giants, feeling miles behind as she listens to the gurgling sound of time slipping away. Better yet to hold time close, let it writhe against the lacuna of her chest. Here in this bathroom that magnifies her every imperfection, she can wait. Tear the pearls from her neck so they cascade to the floor. Drop to her hands and knees and gather them up off the tile—see, even in this fancy room they couldn’t expunge the dirt and grime from their shiny white floor—and drop them one by one into the toilet. Here’s to you, mom. Plunk. You thought I could do it, but I can’t. Plunk. I’m a failure of a daughter. Plunk. I’m so ugly. Plunk. Why did you think I could do it? Plunk. All these people hate me. Plunk. And I hate them. Plunk. Myself too. Plunk. I’m glad you’re dead, mom. Plunk. You can’t see me now. Plunk. Plunk. Plunk. Flush. Plunk. Plunk. Plunk.


End file.
